In a Reunion, Bernanke and Geithner Revisit the Crisis

Ben S. Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said on Tuesday that stronger regulation had significantly improved the resilience of the financial system.

A theoretical replay of the housing bubble would now cause less damage, he said, thanks to changes like reducing banks’ reliance on borrowed money.

“We would have had a minor recession, a housing crash, but we would not have had the financial panic that we had,” he said.

The next crisis, of course, is likely to take a different form, but Mr. Bernanke said the changes would still make a difference.

“Whatever the shock may come from, I think we’re in better shape to deal with it,” he said.

Mr. Bernanke began the book tour for his new memoir, “The Courage to Act,” with the former Treasury secretary Timothy F. Geithner at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square on Tuesday evening.

The event reunited the only two people who served as senior government officials throughout the financial crisis: Mr. Bernanke as Fed chairman, and Mr. Geithner, first as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and then as Treasury secretary.

Mr. Geithner began by joking that the reunion was in some respects painful.

“It brings back bad memories,” he said, “not just reading the book but sitting here with you. You were cool to work with, but we had to do some terrible things.”

In fact, the two men collaborated on many of the main elements of the government’s response to the crisis, including the managed failure of Bear Stearns, the unmanaged collapse of Lehman Brothers and the stress tests of major financial institutions that are now regarded as the effective end of the crisis.

“I would ultimately become a big fan of Tim’s, but when I first met him I was underwhelmed,” Mr. Bernanke wrote in his book.

Mr. Geithner, in turn, described Mr. Bernanke as “the Buddha of central banking” in his crisis memoir, “Stress Test,” published last year.

“His strengths were my weaknesses, with his patience balancing my impatience,” Mr. Geithner wrote of Mr. Bernanke. “We would work in almost perfect harmony throughout the crisis. We trusted each other.”

On Tuesday, the two men showed a less formal side. Mr. Bernanke volunteered his opinion that the Treasury should keep Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill. A decision is expected this year.

“If they take him off the $10 bill, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said.

He also answered some random questions from the audience.

Is the New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady a cheater? Mr. Bernanke: “The judge said no.”

If he could do it all over again, would he choose to be famous? “No,” Mr. Bernanke said. “If you get to choose between being rich or famous, I would vote for rich.”

Asked to recommend other books, Mr. Bernanke named one he often praises: “The Lords of Finance,” Liaquat Ahamed’s Pulitzer Prize-winning account of central banking’s role in the Great Depression.

They also talked about the crisis, of course.

In his book, Mr. Bernanke advanced the view that the 2008 crash was basically a modern update of a standard panic, draining money from banks and newer kinds of financial firms. The Fed under Mr. Bernanke therefore responded in the traditional way, by pumping money into the financial system.

Mr. Bernanke said it was clear in his judgment that the Fed’s efforts had produced a stronger economic recovery. He noted the impact of the crisis was similar in Europe and the United States, but the Fed responded more quickly and aggressively.

He said the Fed’s decision to purchase trillions of dollars in government debt and mortgage bonds, a strategy Europe is now emulating, was a major difference.

Mr. Geithner and Mr. Bernanke have both expressed frustration about what they regard as a lack of public understanding that they bailed out financial firms for the benefit of the broader economy.

“Do you think there’s a way — obviously we weren’t that successful doing it — to make it understandable to people why it’s necessary to provide that level of protection?” Mr. Geithner asked on Tuesday. “On its face it looks like it’s an immoral thing and an unjust thing to do.”

Mr. Bernanke, in response, said some of the anger directed at the government was justified because regulators failed to prevent the crisis.

“The first thing is, you need to do everything you can in advance” to prevent a crisis, he said. “Some of the anger was, I think, justified because the regulators did not prevent the panic in the first place.”

He added that he hoped people would come to understand and appreciate the government’s actions. That is, after all, one reason the two men wrote books.

That goal, however, remains elusive.

As the event ended, a handful of demonstrators shouted at the men for rescuing Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Book Tour Reunites 2 Guardians of Finance. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe